Shell, SBM close Turritella FPSO deal

Floating production solutions firm SBM Offshore today (16 January) closed its $1 billion sale of Turritella, the world’s largest floating production storage and offloading (FPSO), to Royal Dutch Shell.

The sale, announced in July 2017, will enable Shell affiliate Shell E&P Offshore Services to take over operatorship of the entire Stones development in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. SBM said in July that Shell, as operator, can create additional efficiencies through integration of subsea to surface operations and allowing leverage of its optimized Gulf of Mexico organization and infrastructure.

Shell’s Stones is about 320km (200mi) off Louisiana in the Walker Ridge area at 2896m (9500ft) water depth. Turritella is the deepest FPSO development in the world and has a turret with a disconnectable buoy allowing it to weathervane in normal conditions and disconnect from the FPSO upon the approach of a hurricane.